Dan Braganca

Bill alerted me to this piece in the New Yorker on the current wave of populism in the US. It seems anything those in power do is automatically wrong even when it’s things voters say they like. The author, James Surowiecki, argues that anything done will be unpopular until it starts working – so don’t worry too much.

The temptation, then, is simply to abandon ambitious plans in an attempt to annoy no one. But a better approach would be to recognize that voters’ anger is less ideological than pragmatic: at heart, it’s the product of the weak economy and the poor job market. (The movement that today’s populism most closely resembles is Ross Perot’s, which arose, similarly, during a downturn.) And while that means that there’s no way to make voters happy without improving the economy, it also means that, if you start creating jobs, people will start to feel better.